Injuries
by The Alien of Pluto
Summary: Mentions of abuse. -"Tell us about the injuries," the man said. Maddie Fenton hung her head. "He didn't mean it, any of it."


"Tell us about the injuries."

Maddie Fenton hung her head. "He didn't mean it, any of it."

"Danny's a nice kid." Jack said, "He would never do anything like this on purpose."

"Look," the man said, "I know this is hard for you, but I didn't ask for excuses. I asked about the injuries. Tell me."

Maddie turned dull eyes, rimmed in tired black, to look at her husband. Jack gave her a little smile, squeezed her jumpsuit covered knee. Maddie took a deep breath.  
"We noticed Danny's injuries just a couple months ago. He'd been coming home past curfew for a while before that, and his grades were dropping. We thought it was just," Maddie's breath hitched, "teenage rebellion.

"We asked, we demanded, we yelled…but he wouldn't listen. He wouldn't tell us anything. And then one night…when he came home he was bruised all over, and there was blood on his face. There was a long cut over his eye, and an ectoplasmic burn along one side of his neck. We made him tell us. He said…he said-"

"It was ghosts," Jack continued, as Maddie broke into sobs. The other man handed her a tissue. "He'd been secretly hunting ghosts with Sam and Tucker, his friends. But that wasn't the worst of it."

"No?" The man leaned forward, interest sparking in his eyes. "What_ was_ the worst of it?"

"Danny himself was…Danny was a ghost. A half-ghost, because of our portal."

"We didn't think it mattered," Maddie sobbed, "after he told us! We didn't care, he was still our son! We thought that he would be fine. There hadn't been anything to tip us off until that point!"

"Even though he'd told us," Jack said, "he kept shutting us out. He'd disappear for hours, sometimes days without warning, and he'd come home looking like he'd been through Hell and back. So we kept asking."

"And asking."

"And asking. Until finally he just…snapped."

"And that was when it started." The man nodded.

"That was when it started," Jack confirmed solemnly.

"Go on."

Jack closed his eyes, breathing deep. "At first, it was just little things. The couch, the lamp, cups, stuff like that."

"And he never seemed to notice," Maddie said. "He either ignored it completely, or he'd turn around and ask what happened later on."

"And this didn't worry you?"

"Of course it worried us!" Maddie looked highly offended. "We spent all of our time in the lab, hypothesizing on how Danny's ghost half would be affecting him physiologically. We had Jazz analyzing his mental state, making projections."

"But everything we did seemed to make him more angry."

"Any question of his ghost half, or injuries, or even how he was feeling and he'd just…"

"Ectoplasmic bolts. Rays. At us. At Jazz." Jack rolled up the sleeve of his spandex coveralls. His thick arm was laced with scarred and fading burns.

"And it was still like he didn't know he was doing it…" Maddie couldn't meet the other man's eyes. "It always just kind of…happened."

"And you didn't tell anyone about this? The police? The Guys in White?"

Both Fenton parents looked appalled. "What kind of parents do you think we are?! The GiW? No matter what's going on with him, Danny is still our son! We wouldn't let some lunatics with ecto-weapons at him! They'd kill him."

The man sighed. He jotted a quick note on a legal pad, and turned to look at the clock on the wall above his desk. He looked back at the Fenton parents, tired, upset, visibly and obviously mentally scarred. "Thank you, Jack and Maddie, for being here, for telling us this. It will make things easier, we promise. We'll do everything we can to help Danny."

And yet, when the Fenton's had left and he found himself outside the door to Daniel Fenton-Phantom's cell, he couldn't help but wonder. As he pushed open the code-locked, ecto-proofed door, and pulled out the day's syringe, filled with an elephant's dose of sedatives, he couldn't help but ask himself.

He stepped lightly and cautiously toward the boy. Strait-jacket lined with ecto-neutralizers or not, he wouldn't be taking any chances; this boy was half ghost, and that ghost half was sadistic. He ignored the fury-filled green eyes, the face that was dark as a thundercloud, the obvious and utter hate that _radiated_ from the boy, and slid the needle into his neck.

"I wonder if you really can be saved…"

"Don't…count on it."


End file.
